Press

The Personal Data Ecosystem in the Press.

1 Aug, 2012

The emerging market that could kill the iPhoneA handful of tech startups are competing for a foothold in the nascent market for personal data control. And that could mean major changes for the likes of Apple, Google and Microsoft.
By Francesca Robin, contributor

How then to profit? Kaliya Hamlin, a privacy and user-centric advocate and executive director of the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium, shared sections of an unpublished report “Personal Data Landscape,” which outlines three primary business models. As an example, data stored in lockers or accessed via real-time Web browsing can be explicitly for sale-by-owner, or brokered through third-party vendors who sell the information to advertisers. Or, with data aggregation services, users pool their data with others into a larger repository that’s sold (or shared) with businesses and services. “There are likely many more models,” stresses Hamlin.

20 Jul, 2012

The Customer as a God Businesses today tend to herd customers as if they were cattle, but a revolution in personal empowerment is under way—and buying will never be the same again. By Doc Searls [of Project VRM]

This article does not mention PDEC by name or any of the companies but does a great job of painting a picture of the future with personal clouds and services around them.

On Tuesday, the World Economic Forum acknowledged Hamlin’s work in this area by announcing she was one of the 192 people from around the world selected for its Young Global Leaders program. The WEF is based in Switzerland, and is perhaps best known for organizing the annual Davos forum.

People like Hamlin interest me because they constitute what I think of as tech’s quiet influencers. Their power doesn’t flow from holding a big corporate title, but from their passion around a subject and their ability to persuade others through their writing, talks and research.